Specimens of Ainu Folklore (Forgotten Books) Book

These folktales were originally published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan in three installments. The printed original is in parallel columns with the Ainu alongside Batchelor's English translations, and these Ainu versions are still considered a valuable source today (one of them was retranslated by Donald Philippi in his excellent collection Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans [Tokyo, 1979]); the untranslated Ainu has, however, been eliminated in this version.John Batchelor was an Englishman and a missionary to the Ainu for a large part of his life. Because of his calling, he needs to be approached with caution as a source, but his large output of Ainu studies is still one of the primary sources for 19th century Ainu life. He is also mildly condescending toward his subjects, but unlike the book Aino Folk-Tales, the author of this collection shows at times a genuine appreciation for the Ainu as people and for their yukar as literature. (Quote from sacred-texts.com)About the AuthorRichard Gordon Smith (1858 - 1918)Richard Gordon Smith (1858-1918) was an English animal hunter who earlier had spent time in France, Canada, and Norway. He had a falling out from his wife of eighteen years and, as divorce at the time was neither desirable nor respectable, he left to travel full-time, first-class. Throughout his travels he kept a series of eight large leather-bound diaries emblazoned with exotic illustrations and filled with mementoes from all over the world. After Ceylon and Burma, he arrived in Nagasaki harbor on Christmas Eve 1897. He left Japan in February 1900, heading back to England via New Guinea and Fiji, but he came down with a fever and abandoned the trip, returning to Japan instead. Gordon Smith did go back to England briefly in 1903, returninRead More